I want to debunk a common myth about business development meaning rambling about your products and solutions in front of the prospect. The answer is NO! The real differentiator in winning new business is to be ‘you’ personified. That’s it. It’s trite to see that almost every company has a great product offering, innovative solutions and even the bandwidth to win any prospect – given their financial and personnel resources.
But have you ever wondered that when everybody is pushing sales [speak], wanting to win the sales quota and take back fat commission pay check home by what Jill Konrath calls ‘gobbledygook’ and that’s it?
So what is the solution?
It’s you. Yes, that’s right. No product magic or solution spiel will take that far to earn the trust of the prospect than being authentic and being you. It’s you who will stand out from the pack by being a quick learner, running the prospect’s business like a humble CEO, and winning their trust in the process by being agile and helpful!
Now the obvious question is, how do you differ from others in the same realm of winning new business?
Simple: follow these 4 pointers – and you are in safe haven.
Personal branding. Keep reinventing yourself for your prospect. Dorie Clark in her book ‘Reinventing You’ talks about how to brand yourself correctly in front of your audience. You can draw same parallels from this book and apply it in sales. Examine all your touch points – right from your twitter handle, Facebook profile, e-mail messages, voice mails, blog, etc. – to see if anything is in dissonance with what you want to convey about yourself and what you are currently conveying – inadvertently – via combining your touch points. The idea to sound a ‘cogent’ you instead of someone who is spreading too thin and have diverse conceptions in the mind of the buyer. Consistency counts!
Create a Halo effect of your skill-set. Again, Dorie Clark aptly articulated in her book that skills are transferable and portable. Dig out you past accomplishments and see the pattern about how you can leverage your personal brand in winning a new business deal. The common assumption is that if you are good at one thing, you can be good at other domains as well. Find out your 100 times multiplier.
Create and curate epic content. Imagine yourself in your prospect’s shoes and you receive some relevant and useful content on recent mergers or acquisitions in the your industry that could impact their market share? Or sharing some recent product launches in the industry that might impact the your pricing model? The list could go on. But sharing content that triggers prospect’s status quo can help you a take a big leap in winning the prospect’s trust – and eventually signing that Purchase Order.
Show that you care. Sales is about help. And caring. And being empathetic. Your professional disposition talks loud about your personality and what value you can bring to the table. It is you, who can differentiate yourself by being completely relaxed yet concerned about helping solve a prospect’s problem instead of just pounding with your product pitch and not gathering what caused the problem at the very first place. Talk less verbiage and more value. Top sellers don’t just leverage the sales process by how good their product is and how their product can solve a prospect’s predicament or growth opportunities; they establish a rapport that goes way beyond the sales process. They treat their prospect’s business as their own and then think of solutions that will catapult change that is consistent and aligned with their prospect’s business outcomes. Simple equation: help more; earn more.
And lastly, advance yourself in learning incessantly. More learning leads to more value-based selling; which in its own will amp up your new business development.
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